Guadalupe Maravilla (2)

Pupusa Retablo, 2023

Oil on tin, cotton and glue mixture on wood. Courtesy of the artist and mor charpentier, Paris

El Boquerón Retablo, 2023

Oil on tin, cotton and glue mixture on wood. Courtesy of the artist and mor charpentier, Paris

Tripa Chuca, 2024

Wall paint, paint pens, drawing in collaboration with Kay Zevallos Villegas (Kay). Courtesy of the artists
Creation for the 17th Lyon Biennale

Using a wide variety of media, Guadalupe Maravilla’s work explores his personal experience of migration and illness, recounting the story of his Journey alone as an eight year old boy from El Salvador to the United States after escaping the civil war and healing from his battle with cancer as an adult. His sculptures, paintings, drawings, performances and videos reference a cosmology of symbols that link his own journey to ancient and new models of healing. His work incorporates his spiritual practices — meditation, sound and food as medicine to heal the body, spirit and mind.

The paintings are designed and composed digitally by Guadalupe Maravilla and are painted by Daniel Vilchis and his father Alfredo Vilchis. The Retablos reference the devotional images, votive offerings popular in Central America and Mexico that originated in Europe. One painting depicts Guadalupe Maravilla’s experience with war as a child, while another recounts an ancient and contemporary ritual inside a volcano in El Salvador performed by shamans for the artist. The Tripa Chuca mural is a collaboration between Guadalupe Maravilla and Kay Zevallos Villegas, another person living in France that is part of the Cancer community and is also affected by displacement. The drawing game is a bonding experience and a mapping between two people that have experienced similar journeys. This work is inspired by a children’s game played in El Salvador that the artist and other children played to distract themselves from the challenges of war. The game involves drawing lines that never cross, and linking pairs of numbers to create abstract patterns.